Clash of the Titans: Daniel Day-Lewis Slams Brian Cox Over Method Acting Comments
Daniel Day-Lewis is firing back at Brian Cox following the latter’s disparaging remarks about method acting.
“Listen, I worked with Brian Cox once and somehow got drawn into this handbags-at-dawn conflict inadvertently,” Day-Lewis, 68, said in an interview with the UK’s Big Issue published on November 3. The two actors — the Oscar-winning star of The Last of the Mohicans and the “Succession” lead, respectively — appeared together in the 1997 movie The Boxer.
“Brian is a very fine actor who’s done extraordinary work. As a result, he’s been given a soapbox which he shows no sign of climbing down from. Any time he wants to talk about it, I’m easy to find,” Day-Lewis continued.
The actor added, “If I thought during our work together I’d interfered with his working process, I’d be appalled. But I don’t think it was like that. So I don’t know where the f–k that came from.”
Daniel Day-Lewis is famously known as a method actor, often remaining fully in character and going to extreme lengths during filming. For example, he reportedly stayed in a wheelchair throughout the entire shoot of his award-winning role in 1989’s My Left Foot.
For several years, Brian Cox has been vocal against method acting. He notably criticized his on-screen “Succession” son, Jeremy Strong, for his immersive approach to the craft in the HBO series.
Strong, 46, made headlines in 2021 when The New Yorker revealed his full-immersion acting techniques used to portray Kendall Roy.
“I’ve worked with intense actors before. It’s a particularly American disease, I think, this inability to separate yourself off while you’re doing the job,” Cox told The New Yorker. “The result that Jeremy gets is always pretty tremendous. I just worry about what he does to himself. I worry about the crises he puts himself through in order to prepare.”
In a 2021 appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Cox elaborated, “He does get obsessed with the work. And I worry about what it does to him, because if you can’t separate yourself — because you’re dealing with all of this material every day — you can’t live in it. Eventually, you get worn out.”
Cox continued to criticize method acting in a February 2023 interview with Town & Country.
“He’s a very good actor,” Cox said of Strong, “and the rest of the ensemble is all okay with this. But knowing a character and what the character does is only part of the skill set.” He deadpanned, “It’s f–king annoying. Don’t get me going on it.”
Meanwhile, Day-Lewis, who announced his retirement from acting in 2017, recently made a comeback to star in his son Ronan’s new film, Anemone.
“Looking back on it now I would have done well to just keep my mouth shut, for sure,” Day-Lewis told Rolling Stone in September. “It just seems like such grandiose gibberish to talk about.”
Addressing method acting, he told Big Issue that he dislikes how the technique has been “misrepresented to the extent it has been.”
“They focus on, ‘Oh, he lived in a jail cell for six months,’” he said, referring to his 1993 movie, In the Name of the Father. “Those are the least important details. In all the performing arts, people find their methods as a means to an end. It’s with the intention of freeing yourself so you present your colleagues with a living, breathing human being they can interact with. It’s very simple.”
He added, “So it pisses me off this whole ‘oh, he went full method’ thing. What the f–k, you know? Because it’s invariably attached to the idea of some kind of lunacy.”
Finally, Day-Lewis explained his approach to acting: “I choose to stay and splash around, rather than jump in and out or play practical jokes with whoopee cushions between takes or whatever people think is how you should behave as an actor.”
https://nypost.com/2025/11/04/entertainment/daniel-day-lewis-slams-brian-cox-for-method-acting-remarks-hes-been-given-a-soapbox/
